


I'll Remember

by jqueen17



Category: Phan
Genre: Character Death, Feels, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, OTP Feels, Phan - Freeform, Phan AU, Phan feels, Prince!Phil AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6656137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jqueen17/pseuds/jqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My second Prince!Phil AU and the third most-voted fic in my poll:) Hope you guys like this one as much as you did the first one!</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Remember

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has an element of something I've never tried before, so please let me know if you guys like it! I'll leave it a surprise but beware of the heart wrenching feels:)

Phil  
I was sixteen when I met the love of my life. It sounds silly, I know, but I hope our story shows the significance of this one boy.

His name was Dan. He was a gardener, coincidentally enough, and I was lucky indeed that he was. I loved plants; green things crowded the walls of my room in the palace and overhung my balcony and flourished, because I had what my mother had called a green thumb, before she passed last winter. I loved my green thumb, loved the satisfaction and pride of growing a real, living thing and watching it thrive under my care. I loved that my mother had given me a name for it.

 

I was trying to see what made weeping willows, well, weep, the day I met my love. I was climbing one of the willows that bordered the castle, the largest in the vicinity, studying the vines or leaves or whatever they were called. I was just about to pull one out of the trunk when a musical voice spoke from above me, causing me to almost tumble from the tree.

“You shouldn't do that, you know.”

I snapped my head up, gripping the trunk for dear life. “What? Who's there?”

Soft laughter chittered from above, the vines around me swaying gently.

“This is the tree. Would you want someone to pull your hair out?”

I snickered, playing along for the sake of my impending boredom that awaited me at the palace. “Okay, Mr. Tree. Then answer me this; why do weeping willows weep?”

Silence from above. I’d thought the mysterious stranger had left, getting bored of our banter, when he spoke again, his voice quieter and melding with the soft wind blowing through the boughs of our tree.

“We weep because the weight of the world hangs down upon our branches, not breaking but getting very close. When the sky cries, we hold the tears until the pressure becomes too much and we weep, and weep, and weep. Because we have no one to tell our stories to.”

“So you're lonely?” I asked softly, and jumped when the branch beside me dipped with new weight. Beside me sat a boy, younger than me but not by much, with tousled chestnut hair and eyes that sparkled like chocolate and spun gold. He looked at me cautiously at first, and when I saw the recognition flash through his eyes, I thought his demeanor would change. But it didn't; his face remained curious and open and slightly suspicious.

“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice floating through the air like soft piano notes. 

“I like trees. Why are you here?”

A smile flashed across his face, and I sucked in a breath, caught off guard by the radiance of his smile.

“I like trees too. I have to; it's my job.”

“You're job? Don't you mean your parents’?” I asked dubiously, taking into account his size and probable age of about thirteen. His face fell, making my heart clench and want to hold him, if just to make the sadness go away.

“My parents passed away in the winter. I'm staying with my aunt and taking care of my younger siblings.”

I did hug him to me then, because I understood his sorrow and I believed in the power of a comforting touch. The boy's frail shoulders shook as he cried, and I let him take his time, because I had been in the same place only a few months ago. I was older, and I guess that meant I was stronger, so I patted his hair and told him he would be okay, that he would make it through this. After a while his sobs were reduced to silent tears, and eventually, muffled sniffles.

“Better?” I asked, because ‘okay’ was a whole different ballpark. The boy nodded, still sitting fairly close to me as he studied my face.

“You're the Prince. Why are you talking to me?”

Being only sixteen, I hadn't really known. “Because I like you, I suppose. You're interesting and funny and I like making friends.”

The boy nodded, accepting this and rewarding me with another brief smile. “Well, I know your name is Prince Philip. I'm just Dan.”

“Phil,” I corrected, because I hated being a prince. “Nice to meet you, Dan.”

Dan smiled once more before dropping from the boughs of the tree, graceful and beautiful even at thirteen. I watched him dash off to tend to the sprawling gardens around the grounds, sitting in the tree and simply wondering what it would be like if I could be friends with who I wished.

 

Dan and I made the willow our place. We met quite often among its boughs, talking and laughing and falling in love, though neither of us knew it at the time. We didn't realize our attraction to one another until the day of Dan's fifteenth birthday, a cold and rainy day for the beginning of June.

“I have to leave,” he whispered, voice mixing with the quiet hiss of rain around us, though we were dry under the canopy of the willow.

“Why?” I asked, genuinely afraid because Dan was all I had in this world at the age of eighteen. 

“My aunt committed treason, and we're being forced to go. I can't ever come back here, or I'll be killed.”

He didn't cry, for Dan had grown up in the time we'd shared together. He was no longer the small, frail child he was when I met him; he was growing up, growing wiser, and knew that tears wouldn't stop the inevitable. That fact didn't stop me, however, from turning into a blubbering, and what I'm sure was a very unattractive, mess. 

And Dan's eyes filled with tears for the first time in two short years, simply from looking at my face.

“Phil,” he whispered, pulling me closer to him, voice full of sorrow even though it was only a whisper. “Please. Don't cry. Don't make this the last memory I have of you.”

And so I'd kissed him. Because my best friend, the only person I'd ever opened up to, was being torn from my life by the very laws that had kept us apart for so long already. 

The laws my family had created.

Dan's lips were surprisingly warm and soft, in stark contrast to his calloused hands and perpetual coldness. It should have been weird, kissing someone three years younger than me. It should have been weird, kissing a boy. But it wasn't. It wasn't.

We kissed for a long time, neither of us wanting to let the other go, knowing that when we separated we'd be separated forever. I ran my hands through Dan's curly hair over and over, memorizing the texture and the feeling of knowing someone loved me as much as I loved them. Dan's arms were wrapped around my lower back, one hand running up and down my spine in a gentle rhythm that contrasted the desperate, chaotic way our lips were locked together. Eventually we knew it was time for Dan to go, so we sat back, faces wet despite the shelter of the willow.

Dan's expression was broken as he stared at me, memorized me, as I did the exact same thing.

“I'll write,” he managed to get out, before the sobs cut his voice off in a horrible, strangled noise. I nodded, forcing a smile through what felt like a frozen expression. Dan gave me one last, long look before slipping down from the tree, his sobs still audible even through the wind and rain.

And then he was gone.

***

“Prince Philip? Your father would like to see you in his quarters.”

I nodded at the messenger, taking a deep breath before making my way through the palace, stopping before the grand doors of my father's room. I knew what I would see when the doors opened, but I had to prepare myself each and every time.

My father was ill. Ill like my mother had been, shortly before she'd passed away, with a gaunt face and pale skin, paler than our usually ivory tone, and too-bright eyes. This fever, this plague, was staining the kingdom with death at an increasingly rapid pace. It was frightening, to say the least, because it didn't target one specific type of people or age group. It took young and old, rich and poor, male and female, healthy and sick. Everyone.

And it was working through my father faster than anyone had seen it do before. It was killing the King, and once he died…

I would be the last one left.

I did have a brother, but he'd left, about a month after our mother died. He'd left with a girl, a servant, because my brother was dramatic like that. I didn't see it as dramatic so much as human, because people love who they love, no matter the differences and rules separating them. I would know.

But I had stayed, because my father needed me. I had stayed because it was my job, and I knew that if someone didn't take over the kingdom, chaos would erupt across the land. I couldn't let that happen; chaos was my biggest fear. It had been what had caused this disease to outbreak in the first place.

I shook these thoughts from my head, pushing the doors open and walking to stand before my father, laying in his bed. My father had always been tough, had taught my brother and I how to be equally as strong, but he was anything but as I stared down at him, waiting for him to speak. When he did, I sort of wished I hadn't come at all.

“Philip,” he wheezed, clearing his throat before continuing. “I'm going to need you to be strong, no matter what happens. If the kingdom sees weakness, even senses it, it'll fall apart. But they like you, and I know you will make me proud.”

I nodded, clenching my jaw to keep from crying. I hadn't cried in five years.

“I will, father. I promise. I love you.”

My father smiled, and I bit my tongue, toughing it out and keeping my promise to him. 

“I love you too, son. Now go, please; I'm exhausted.”

I dipped my head, retreating from the room and running a hand over my eyes even though they were dry.

***

My father died that night, thankfully in his sleep. I knew I was expected to grieve, and I would. I had to. But I had to take care of my people first. They came before me.

“The King has passed on this night,” I announced, addressing a large crowd from the balcony of the palace. An upset murmur spread amongst the group, but they quieted as I raised a hand. 

“However, he did appoint me as his successor before he did, and I would like to institute a day of mourning for tomorrow. Classes will be canceled, and work will be put on hold. Stay home, be with your loved ones, and appreciate your time together more greatly. Thank you.”

Applause erupted behind me, but I didn't care. I was King, and I didn't care. All I wanted to do was sleep.

***

I decided I needed an examination the day of my twenty-eighth birthday. Being King was exhausting, and quite frankly, I believed I was sick. Not physically, but mentally, emotionally. In ten years I had lost every person that mattered to me, and it had taken a toll. I was lonely, I hadn't found anyone else to love, and my advisors had said I looked ill. 

And so, I had instructed them to locate the best healer in the land, because I would not die the way in which my parents had. I swore I wouldn't. I would beat this plague, if it was the last thing I did.

While I waited that day for my advisors to return, I pulled a box out from under my bed that contained things I hadn't looked at for years. Nine years, to be exact.

The things were letters, scraps of paper and dried flowers, objects of random variance that made my eyes prick irritably in remembrance. They were from Dan, things that had made it to me from wherever he’d ended up all those years ago. They'd stopped arriving after one year, the last coming on my nineteenth birthday, exactly one year since I'd last seen Dan.

I never did figure out why he'd stopped sending them, because I quite frankly didn't want to dwell on the possibilities. They were all of equal negativity, whether he had stopped loving me or had died or had given up on me loving him. Only one possibility I knew for sure, and Dan would always know the answer to the others. But I knew I still loved him, probably always would, because Dan was special and Dan had been mine and I had been Dan's. 

The birthday letter was the sheet of paper I removed from the box, as I did every year on my birthday. It was a single page, written on the front and back in Dan's distinctive messy, swirling handwriting. Some of the letters were watermarked, ink blurring them together in places, as if tears or rain had hit the page at random moments, when the ink was still wet. Judging by the contents of the letter, I guessed the former rather than the latter.

 

Phil,  
I’m so sorry. I know I should be there, on your birthday, even if I’m in danger and even if it might get me killed. Living without you is just as bad.  
But I know you can be happy again. I know that when you get crowned King, you will do great things, even greater than your mother and father. I don’t blame your family for what happened to mine; that’s a different discussion for a different time.  
And we’re okay, where we are. I’m not exactly sure where that is, but it’s in the hills and I can see the stars every night and there’s a willow in the meadow behind my house and I think of you and it hurts.  
But we’ll be okay. We’ll find each other again, I swear on my life. I’ll never forget you. And I’ll never stop loving you.  
I’ll remember. I’ll remember the way you would talk about your mother when you were sad, and how you’d bring up bloody plants when you were happy. I’ll remember how you laughed at all my silly, crude jokes, even if they weren’t funny. I know you just did it to make me smile, and I’m grateful for that. I needed that happiness in my life. I’ll remember how you were my happiness, how you were the light in my life of darkness, and how you pulled me from it with a simple smile or gesture or ridiculous remark. I’ll remember that day I left, which was both the best and worst day of my life. I’ll remember how much it hurt to leave you, but also how good it felt to finally kiss you after all that time.   
I’ll always remember you, Phil. I’ll always remember how much we loved each other.

Forever yours,  
Dan

 

I had just returned the letter to the box when I heard a knock at my door, running a hand over my somewhat misty eyes. 

“Yes, come in.”

One of my advisors walked in, assessing my face and hurrying to continue when I tilted my chin up ever so slightly.

“Your majesty, sir, we’ve located a specialized healer. He’s waiting in the medical quarters.”

I nodded thoughtfully, trying to look calm and collected and not like the emotional mess I was inside. “And his name?”

“Daniel Howell, your majesty. He specializes in emotio-”

I was already running past my head advisor with a very un-regal-like velocity, not letting him finish or even ask me what I was doing. I don’t think I’d ever moved so fast in my entire life, blazing through the palace, walls blurring around me as I burst through the medical quarter doors, completely winded and dizzy.

And there stood a man, not a boy anymore, washing his hands in the sink and looking absolutely shocked as I burst into the room.

“Dan?”

His eyes widened, recognition flooding into his big, beautiful brown eyes. They were one of the only things about him that had remained unchanged in the ten years since I’d last seen him. He stepped forward, faltering only slightly before crashing into my arms, hugging me to him and laughing that familiar, musical sound. For a moment we were in the willow again, still kids and still innocent and still believing in miracles. I hugged him tighter, forcing myself to the present.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Dan laughed, stepping backwards but keeping his hands resting on my arms.

“Hey now, watch that cursing. Don’t fall into my bad habit.”

I narrowed my eyes, making him chuckle and thus making me smile.

“Kidding. Your advisors hunted me down; I honestly didn’t even realize this was your family’s kingdom. Speaking of; are you King now?”

His eyes flicked up to my crown, and my face must have given him his answer, because he pulled me back to him and whispered against the side of my head, “The plague?”

I nodded, and he tightened his grip. We simply held each other for a few long moments before I stepped back, forcing a smile onto my face. I didn’t want to be sad with Dan here, because Dan was here.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat awkwardly. “You’re a, um, healer, now?”

Dan nodded, seeming proud and almost childlike in his pride. I knew it was because he’d never thought he’d be anything spectacular, anything worth remembering. But Dan had always enjoyed helping people, no matter the cost, so this was a perfect career path for him.

“Yeah, I went to school for it and everything. I’m actually pretty okay at it, believe it or not.”

I laughed, reaching forward to hold one of his hands between both of my own. “I wouldn’t doubt that you’re considerably better than ‘okay’ at it.”

Dan blushed ever so slightly, smiling as he turned to gesture to the examination table behind him.

“So, am I going to help you, or…?”

I hopped up on the table, grinning as Dan slipped a medical coat over his clothes, arranging different tools on the counter on the other side of the room. He looked so professional and serious and grown up that it equal parts amused me and intrigued me, and quite honestly, impressed me. It was, for lack of a better term to describe it, a hot look on him.

Dan returned to me with a stethoscope around his neck and a pair of gloves in his hand, looking sheepish.

“I can wear gloves, if you’re uncomfortable with me touching you?” he phrased it like a question, holding the gloves up and looking at me hesitantly. I snickered, giving him a look.

“Of course I’m not uncomfortable around you, Dan. That’s silly.”

Dan blushed again, fidgeting as he set the gloves on the counter once more. “It’s just that you haven’t seen me in so long and you could feel differently and I just-”

I cut him off, smiling softly. “Dan. I trust you, okay? You’re one of the only people I genuinely do trust. Time hasn’t changed that.”

My words seemed to reassure him, because he put the stethoscope in his ears and placed the end against my chest, one hand resting on my back.

“Take deep breaths,” he said, low and serious. I did as he said, trying to calm my fluttering heartbeat that spiked each time I remembered his hand was on my back, his face so close to mine. I hadn’t been this close to anyone in years, let alone let anyone touch me. And here Dan was, serious and formal and so amazingly handsome that I couldn’t believe he was still available, let alone to me.

Once he’d stepped back to write something on a notepad, I went ahead and asked, not wanting to let myself think differently and lie to myself.

“So, are you with anyone?”

Dan stiffened in surprise, facing the counter as he spoke. I had a good feeling it was because he didn’t want to meet my eyes. That had always been difficult for Dan; speaking directly to someone while maintaining eye contact.

“No, actually. I haven’t been since…”

“Since me?” I asked, unable to contain my shock. Dan was… Dan was Dan. And I couldn’t believe I had mattered as much to him as he had to me.

Dan scratched at the back of his neck, avoiding my eyes. “Yeah. I just… I loved you, Phil. I still do, if we’re being honest.” Dan stopped abruptly, looking up in alarm. “If that’s-I mean, it’s perfectly fine if you don’t feel the same, if you have someone else. That’s great! It’s not my place to-”

I laughed quietly, Dan’s face turning bright red and lips tilting up as well. 

“Well, as a matter of fact I do feel the same way. I’ve missed you, Dan.”

Tears were visible in his expressive eyes, but his dimple was as well. “I’ve missed you too, Phil.”

 

Dan diagnosed me with stress, simple as that. I was wound up and anxious, and when I told Dan I didn’t want medication of any sort, he’d suggested a massage. I’d lifted an eyebrow at that, but he had only rolled his eyes and asked if I wanted to go to my room or stay in the medical quarters. Of course I’d chosen my room-the medical quarters reminded me all too much of sickness and disease. 

Directing me to lay on my stomach on my bed and remove my shirt, Dan had gone to wash his hands in the little room connecting to my quarters. I did as he said, feeling self-conscious despite having no reason to be. I wasn’t the most muscular person on earth, but I wouldn’t go so far to call myself unattractive, either. And Dan’s reaction as he sat beside me wasn’t negative, in the least.

“You’ve… changed, since the last time I saw you,” he observed, running a hand over my back and making me want to shiver.

“Yeah, I’m not such a shrimp anymore.”

Dan’s laughter was as musical as it had always been, and he began to work the tension out of my lower back first. I gasped, not knowing how tender the muscles there were.

“Shit, sorry! If it hurts, tell me to stop.”

I shook my head, smiling into my pillow. “No, it feels good, actually. I’m just more tense than I’d thought.”

I assumed Dan nodded, because he went to work again, his strong hands working slowly but efficiently. I could feel myself relaxing with each passing minute, as Dan steadily worked his way up my back. It was one of the most pleasant hours I’d had in a long time, and I sighed as Dan sat back, rolling over to face him.

“Thank you,” I said softly, Dan smiling in an equal manner. When he began pushing himself to his feet, I snatched his wrist, pulling him back.

“You’re not going anywhere, mister. Not until I’m asleep.”

Dan chuckled, laying back and turning to face me. Our faces were mere centimeters apart, so I closed the distance and pressed my lips against his for the first time since we were kids. Dan returned the kiss, deepened it, and in that kiss we could feel each other’s loneliness and sorrow from all those years in which we had been separated. I began running my hands through Dan’s hair, like I had on that last day in the willow, except that now it was straight and his hands tangled in my equally flat hair as well.

“Your hair,” I breathed, not bothering to stop kissing him. It was hopeless. We were hopeless.

“I hated it curly,” he responded, pulling me on top of him and pressing our lips together once more. He broke apart one more time to say, “I looked like a hobbit”, before continuing the kiss. And we stayed like that for who knows how long, eventually falling asleep in each other’s arms and thanking the universe we had found each other again. Neither of us could imagine living without the other, not now that we had found a way to stay together. I was King, and now that I made the rules I could change them to include Dan. Because Dan was an inevitable part of my life, of my existence, and if I couldn’t live with him what was the point of anything at all?

***

We married six months later, the entire kingdom gathered below the balcony of the palace, filled with laughter and smiles and tears and applause. They accepted us, because our love was undeniable and inevitable and irrevocable and unconditional. 

The kingdom loved Dan. He was charismatic, humourous, and charming, earning the respect of some and the awe of most. He had an energy about him that was captivating, that of which I did not. I had the grace and kindness and positivity; Dan had the wisdom and the connectivity and the relatability. The people fell for him almost as hard as I had, for Dan was finally mine and I could finally stop feeling so alone.

Dan worked miracles across the land, curing everything from colds to fevers to throat and stomach sickness to flu. He’d never get sick himself, working so quickly and efficiently that it barely had time to register his presence before it was gone. Nearly every family owed him their lives, because he had saved theirs. Their love’s. Their parent’s. Their children.

But he had never been able to cure the plague. He hated himself for it, hated that he couldn’t terminate the one disease that had caused so much loss and sorrow in my life. I assured him it wasn’t his fault, that it couldn’t be helped, but that didn’t stop him from striving to find a cure. And he had finally found one, the day of his twenty-seventh birthday. He had administered it to every family in the land, enough to where if anyone caught the disease they could be healed in time to save themselves. The medicine would have to be taken within four hours of the first symptoms, or it would not work. A close window, but a miraculous window nonetheless.

I had noticed how tired Dan looked when he had smiled at the crowd gathered below the balcony, his dimple barely forming and his eyes lacking their usual light. He loved helping people, it brought him the greatest joy in his life; that’s how I knew something was wrong.

“Dan,” I said quietly, as the people talked amongst themselves below us. He turned his gaze to me, swaying so violently that a collective gasp went up from the crowd. I caught him before he fell, eyes fluttering closed, face pale.

I don’t know how I’d ended up at the medical ward, but I found myself sitting next to Dan as a nurse examined him on the sole bed in the room, worry staining her features. Dan was sweating, but his hands were eerily cold as I held them, a tremor shuddering through his body every few seconds. The nurse retreated from the room without a word, and I didn’t ask questions because I was terrified of the answers.

And then I knew, as Dan’s eyes fluttered open and met my own, that he had the very plague that he had just discovered a cure for. His eyes were bright and shiny, too shiny, and slightly bloodshot. Almost exactly how my father’s had looked, hours before the plague had claimed his life.

“You’ll be fine.” I told Dan firmly, making his lips tilt up in a weak attempt at a smile. I was so mad and so scared that I was shaking, matching the tremors that wracked through Dan at random intervals.

“How long have you felt like this?”

My words were forced, scratchy and high-pitched and terrified wrapped in a controlled tone. Dan winced, sucking in a breath before answering quickly and painfully.

“This morning.”

It was nearly sunset, and I physically felt my face pale at his words. I was about to speak as the nurse returned, looking grim and slightly frightened as she saw my face.

“Get him the cure. Now,” I snapped, not caring that I sound like a rude and demanding king. Dan couldn’t die. He couldn’t. I wouldn’t allow it.

“Your highness, it won’t-”

“GET HIM THE CURE NOW!”

She jumped at my words, and I felt Dan’s warning grip on my arm.

“Phil,” he said quietly, and the anger fell from my face as he spoke. He had his eyes closed, but I still whispered, unable to believe this was happening.

“Dan, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you take the cure earlier?”

A tremor shook him, making him suck in a breath before answering. But his words were powerful, confident, and caused the tears to prick at my eyes.

“They needed it, Phil. They needed me to give it to them. It was my job, I couldn’t let them down. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself…”

He stopped, panting, and I leaned down and wrapped my arms around him, his hands fluttering over my back as I sobbed into his chest. The first time I’d cried in twelve years. Dan knew it, too, and he cried with me, the tears leaking from his eyes in rivulets of pink. Even the nurse had to step out, because I didn’t stop.

“I love you Dan. I swear I always will.”

“I love you too, Phil,” he gasped, and I kissed him because I’d taken the cure because I assumed he had, as well.

“I’ll remember, Dan,” I whispered, unable to say anything else without falling to pieces as the biggest piece of me lay dying beside me.

And I cried, and cried, and cried, laying beside Dan and knowing the exact moment when my best friend breathed his last breath, seeming as if he knew it was coming when he squeezed my hand moments before his entire body relaxed beside mine.

And then he was gone.

***

“Daddy, was Papa King, too?”

I smiled at my daughter, our daughter, and ruffled her long, curly brown hair in response. I’d adopted her on the one-year anniversary of Dan’s death. I didn’t want that date to be a sad memory forever, so I’d done what Dan would have wanted and made it a happy one. Willow had Dan's crazy hair and my blue eyes, and was both clumsy and graceful. Like her fathers.

“Do you want to hear the story of your Papa, Willow?”

“Yes! Yes!”

So I’d taken a deep breath, promising myself I wouldn’t cry. This is for you, too, Dan.

“I was sixteen when I met the love of my life. It sounds silly, I know, but I hope our story shows the significance of this one boy.” Willow’s face lit up, knowing that was, in fact, her Papa.

“His name was Dan. He was a gardener, coincidentally enough, and I was lucky indeed that he was. I loved plants; green things crowded the walls of my room in the palace and overhung my balcony and flourished, because I had what my mother had called a green thumb…”


End file.
